Author Archives: kelly

No real travel news for now, but I do have art news: I am working on a project called 19 Mandalas. This is a photo of my first completed piece, entitled Focus.

I lasted five months in a small, unpleasant conservative little town and am now back south of the lake in New Orleans proper, which is home-home. I don’t need Google maps here. My friends are here. I’ve joined a writing group and I am making art again, tentatively, slowly. One of these days, I’ll haveContinue reading “another update, for those watching at home”

I’m back in the US. Got a house a little outside the city for now and I am still waiting on my things to arrive back from Spain, so it’s a mostly empty, cold old house with paper plates and two folding chairs. But man, it feels good to be home. I had a littleContinue reading “home”

I’m done. Spain and I didn’t work out. It’s over. I’ve learned some incredibly valuable & brutal lessons with this experience. I am grateful for it, even (especially) the painful parts because that’s what is making me grow. It’s so beautiful here. I got to travel a bit around the country, take a road tripContinue reading “packing it in”

So part of my job is risk mitigation. I don’t talk very much about my job, or at all really, on this site because I like to keep my personal and professional lives well and clearly separated. But I was thinking yesterday after work & after I published my last blog post on hating SpainContinue reading “mitigation”

Yesterday I had A Bad Spain Day. It’s really been the whole week, but let’s focus on yesterday. Yesterday, I had an appointment three villages over to get a minor medical procedure done. In and out, the whole procedure takes less than five minutes. Well because of traffic, it took me nearly an hour toContinue reading “A Bad Spain Day”

Good morning! Life continues to be crazy. I am making some exciting plans for next summer, so stay tuned. Hint: Sweden. 🙂

I’ve kicked off two book-length writing projects about our move to Spain and they are progressing nicely. I’ve also picked up an ambitious translation project to help me learn Spanish. Happy to report our stuff finally showed up last week – eight months later – so the house is looking and feeling more like aContinue reading “So long for now”

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I went to a reservoir park. We spent an hour hiking around. There is a quartz line running down toward the beach about 30 ft long, and big chunks of white and rose quartz all over the ground. Great spot for rock hounds like us. Great spotContinue reading “The reservoir”

This thing has a name: expat burnout. It helps to put a name to it. And it helps to know this is common. Even expected. Today I had a chat with a friend/work associate of sorts in Barcelona that made me feel somewhat human again. I needed that social interaction. We’ve been hermiting probably tooContinue reading “Burnout”